Dòmhnall Càm in South Dell

Another grisly story about our Uig hero, Dòmhnall Càm, who has a much less heroic reputation in other parts of the island. This is from Capt FWL Thomas’s Traditions of the Macaulays (1880) and he notes that “this tale is certainly mythical”.

We ought in our own day to be very thankful to that Divine Providence which has dispelled the barbarous darkness and depression from our land, and shed upon it the light of the Gospel, for there are many things related of the hero, Donald Cam, which are revolting to humanity. It is told that Donald Cam had a foster-mother who used to go about the country begging for meal &c. She was at one time down at Ness, gathering meal in summer, and she was returning by South Dell, in which there then six tenants. The tenants, seeing a woman with a bag of meal on her back, agreed with her to let them have the meal till the following harvest, when they would pay it back, and more besides. To this the woman consented, yet when she returned to Uig, and Donald Cam asked her what success she had had at Ness, she complained that the tenants at South Dell had taken the meal from her without giving her anything in return.

Donald Cam went to Ness, and when he came to Dell these poor tenants were in the ebb (foreshore), seeking shell-fish for food, for those were years of great scarcity. He asked them no questions but ordered each to dig his own grave; and when they had done so, he killed all the six, and buried them there.

Another unpleasant Dòmhnall Càm story is here.